Success in Sweatpants

There came a point where I tired of the hamster wheel of work, sleep, work, sleep that didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere.  I sold my company and jumped back into corporate America, eager to focus on work without all the details of running a business.  I worked in the high technology sector for a Fortune 500 corporation.

There were good times and bad times–the work was nearly always interesting and the politics were nearly always frustrating. The internet took hold during this phase of my career, and I naturally incorporated it into my work as a marketing director. I watched with interest as the way things got done fundamentally changed because of this amazing new medium.

Eight years later, one month after moving to a new city for the job, I got laid off. Cost-saving strategies had taken hold that pretty much axed any kind of marketing function in the company. So there I was, new to town and with no network. The idea of going back out on my own didn’t seem workable, so I sent out resumes and started interviewing. It took me nearly nine months to find a new job and one more year  after that to realize once and for all that this wasn’t the road I for me any more. 

Far from the autonomous life that I had had in the large corporation, I felt suffocated by the constraints placed upon me by my boss. I had tried to make it work but had gotten more and more out of synch with myself. I no longer wanted someone else to control my destiny. I wanted to continue in my field, but I wanted to make my own rules.

My resistance to starting another business faded in the light of what felt like indentured servitude.  I needed to take the reins back and run my own business, even if I ended up making less money initially. Failure would be my failure, and success would be my success-either way I was willing to be accountable. I was determined to succeed-and far better than the first time around.